Chrome growth picks up; Windows 7 becomes the world’s most used OS

In the latest metrics, Windows 7 passes XP just in time for Windows 8's debut.

The last few months have seen Chrome poised to overtake Firefox as the second most widely used browser, and Windows 7 on the cusp of overtaking Windows XP to become the most popular operating system. For a long time it looked as if Chrome would win its race first, but in June and July its market share declined, allowing Firefox to strengthen its lead.

In August, Chrome resumed its gains, but didn't grow enough to leapfrog Firefox. Windows 7, however, has at long last overtaken the 11-year-old Windows XP—in the same month that its successor, Windows 8, made its way to the first end-user systems.

The twin platforms of the iPhone and the iPad leave Safari riding high when it comes to mobile browsing.

Normal service has been resumed in the browser wars. This month's interesting result was operating system share. It has taken Windows 7 almost three years to catch up with Windows XP, and the newer platform still falls short of a majority share. Windows XP could be Microsoft's last operating system to ever attain that status. Although corporations are likely to continue to migrate to Windows 7 even after Windows 8's general availability on October 26, it's likely (though not certain) that consumer sales of Windows 7 will dry up.

Apple, with its considerably smaller user base, does have more success at keeping its user base current, though it too has plenty of users on older versions. In total, Mac OS X users slightly outnumber Windows Vista users on the Internet, at 7.11 percent and 6.15 percent respectively. Just weeks after its release, already 20 percent of these OS X users are on the latest version, 10.8 Mountain Lion. However, a substantial 46 percent are on version 10.6 or below, leaving them two or more versions out of date.

Chrome continues its history of rapid cut-overs and rapid adoption of new versions; Chrome transitions occur with an efficiency that mainstream operating system developers can only dream of.

Firefox, in spite of adopting a Chrome-like policy, still lags some way behind Google's browser. There remains a hard core of non-updating Web users, though this is slowly diminishing,

While the past 18 months have seen almost too many versions of Chrome and Firefox to count, Internet Explorer remains at version 9. Version 10 is finished, and it's part of Windows 8, which is already available to corporate customers. The downloadable version for Windows 7, however, isn't out yet, and Microsoft has given no indication of when it will be made available. October 26, the day of Windows 8's general availability, is one plausible guess.